Full House

So yes­ter­day at this time I had one 11-year-old girl under my roof: tonight I have the same, plus a 3‑and-a-half-year-old girl, and THREE KIT­TENS! I am not mak­ing this up. I’ll give you a brief ver­sion as befits the moth­er of all these peo­ple who must get a decent night’s sleep in order to take care of them all at 7 a.m. tomorrow…

Avery and mean­dered over to Mid­dle­bury (well, it should­n’t have been a mean­der, but a dead straight shot, only I am rub­bish at direc­tions as any­one will tell you) to vis­it a tack shop and buy a hel­met for her, and as we approached the shop, we passed a sign that said, “Tag Sale: Free Kit­tens.” Well, it was but the work of a moment to stop by on our way back out of Mid­dle­bury, and to explain in all sin­cer­i­ty that we could­n’t real­ly adopt the kit­tens, as we live in Lon­don, but… they and their five sib­lings had been found in a storm drain and aban­doned by their moth­er and… I felt the peo­ple who res­cued them had done all any­one could expect any­one to do, and now there they were, liv­ing in a house whose land­lord had for­bid­den cats.

So Avery tried to play the voice of rea­son, but it was no use; we took the kit­tens and are now faced with find­ing homes for them, but how hard can it be? They are com­plete­ly DAR­LING. Avery has named them Cap­tain James Hast­ings, Aman­da, and Lucy Eliz­a­beth. For short, Hast­ings, Mandy and Lizzie. They are cozi­ly ensconced in my laun­dry room, just on the night of Jane’s sleep­over adventure.

And there you have it: How To Com­pli­cate Your Life in Two Easy Steps: bor­row your per­fect niece, and acquire three new ani­mals… all in one after­noon. Try it: any­one can do it!